Tuesday, 24 April 2012

A question to those of you who restore old newspaper comics from sunday sections: Is there a good Step-by-step around? Not a quick "Scan and save for web" but something actually written by people working with restoration on how to scan and restore for archival purposes.
How to make scans and restorations good enough to be printed. (I'm thinking of IDW's and Fantagraphics books here.)

I'm about to scan a zillion of old "Barney Google" sundays from the 20's, a big file of Bob Lubbers' "Long Sam" etc and I want to do it right the first time around. :)

Panel from Long Sam 12-4, 1955.

Update:
Did a test following Manuel's advice and I think I'm on the right way now!
Thanks for the input all of you! Here's a sample panel from one of the pages I test scanned. The paper was very lightly yellowed and I think I got pretty close to the original when I scanned.
(Original is 400dpi, file size reduced for the blog.) Enjoy!

Saturday, 14 April 2012

Back in the 60's the Swedish weekly magazine "Året Runt" ran Li'l Abner, or "Knallhatten" as he is known as here. Unlike the the american publication, where a certain sunday page had to be published on a specific date, the pages in Året Runt could be published years after they originally had been printed in the US. Not that it mattered, though. A good story is always a good story.
However, the editor of Året Runt didn't think all Li'l Abner stories were that hot. He got them in bunches from Serie-Service who provided Året Runt with syndicated material, and he said no to plenty of them. Serie-Service even ordered lots of older stories from the United Feature Syndicate when the editor ran out of newer stories to choose from.
When he did come across a story he liked the sundays had the english dialogue removed and Swedish text added before publication.
End of story.

Or...

What happened to all the stories he rejected?
Guess what? The proofs to them just surfaced!
Covering the late 40's to the mid 60's, there are plenty of rejected ones that didn't see print in Sweden in that pile. And to see the artwork in sharp black and white: Wow!
Beeing a fan of Bob Lubbers I thought I should share a short story here, featuring his gorgeous artwork. (Don't know if he did all of the work on these pages, or if it was a teamwork. But Moonbeam is drawn by Bob, thats for sure.)
Three pages from 1963 featuring the Pincushions and Moonbeam McSwine.
Enjoy!

Sunday, 8 April 2012

Fans of Bob Lubbers "Robin Malone" might be interested to know that the strip ended not in one but in two ways. One where Robin dies and one where Mike dies.

Don't know if the newspapers had an option of running the strip of their choice or if the death of Mike were something that just one paper made up. (That version was found HERE.)

Update: Check the comments for more info on this from Ger Apeldoorn!

Update: Well, what do you know... There's a third version of the final Robin Malone daily!

There's no doubt about the death of Robin here. Notice that this one is dated 3.14 while the Mike versions are dated 3.11. This one is signed "BL" while the other versions aren't signed at all.
Makes me even more curious about the first two versions.

This one was found in Glamour International #26. A great publication on Bob Lubbers, edited by Alberto Becattini.

Thursday, 5 April 2012

"Very Rare and unusall Lithograph "One of a Kind" Only one Lithograph was ever made of this Image The art was done by Carl Barks. I was at the Carl Barks Estate Auction bought the Painting of two horses plowing under the rainbowl I just discovered this Lithograph of Scrooge. It was made by adding Carls Famous painting "Another Rainbow" to this painting of the two horses under the rainbow. Only one such image was ever made."